Although their ancestors came from the Great Lakes region and they now live in several midwestern states, the Ioway (Baxoje) people claim a rich history in Missouri dating back to the eighteenth century. Living alongside white settlers while retaining their traditional way of life, the tribe eventually had to make difficult choices in order to survive—choices that included unlikely alliances, resistance, and even violence. This is the first book on the Ioway to appear in thirty years and the first to focus on their role in Missouri’s colonial and early statehood periods. Greg Olson tells how the Ioway were attracted to the rich land between the Mississippi and Missouri rivers as a place in which they could peacefully reside. But it was here that they ended up facing the greatest challenges to their survival as a people, with leaders like White Cloud and Great Walker rising to meet those demands. Olson draws on interviews with contemporary tribal members to convey an understanding of Ioway beliefs, practices, and history, and he incorporates reports of Indian agents and speeches of past Ioway leaders to illuminate the changes that took place in the tribe’s traditional ways of life. He tells of their oral traditions and creation stories, their farming and hunting practices, and their alliances with neighboring Indians, incoming settlers, and the U.S. government. In describing these alliances, he shows that the Ioway did not always agree among themselves on the direction they should take as they navigated the crosscurrents of a changing world, and that the attempts of some Ioway leaders to adapt to white society did not prevent the tribe’s descent into poverty and despair or their ultimate removal from their lands. As modern Ioway in Kansas and Oklahoma work to recover the history of their people—and as local historians recognize their important place in Missouri history—Olson’s book offers a balanced account of the profound effects on the Ioway of other tribes, explorers, and settlers who began to move into their homelands after the Louisiana Purchase. Written for a general audience, it is a useful, accessible introduction to the changing fortunes of the Ioway people in the era of exploration, colonialism, and early statehood.

At the height of the cocaine-fueled 1980s, Carolyn Wilkins left a disastrous marriage in Seattle and, hoping to make it in the music business, moved with her four-year-old daughter to a gritty working-class town on the edge of Boston. They Raised Me Up is the story of her battle to succeed in the world of jam sessions and jazz clubs—a man’s world where women were seen as either sex objects or doormats. To survive, she had to find a way to pay the bills, overcome a crippling case of stage fright, fend off a series of unsuitable men, and most important, find a reliable babysitter. Alternating with Carolyn’s story are the stories of her ancestors and mentors—five musically gifted women who struggled to realize their dreams at the turn of the twentieth century: Philippa Schuyler, whose efforts to “pass” for white inspired Carolyn to embrace her own black identity despite her “damn near white” appearance and biracial child; Marjory Jackson, the musician and single mother whose dark complexion and flamboyant lifestyle raised eyebrows among her contemporaries in the snobby, color-conscious world of the African American elite; Lilly Pruett, the daughter of an illiterate sharecropper whose stunning beauty might have been her only ticket out of the “Jim Crow” South; Ruth Lipscomb, the country girl who dreamed, against all odds, of becoming a concert pianist and realized her improbable ambition in 1941; Alberta Sweeney, who survived a devastating personal tragedy by relying on the musical talent and spiritual stamina she had acquired growing up in a rough-and-tumble Kansas mining town. They Raised Me Up interweaves memoir with family history to create an entertaining, informative, and engrossing read that will appeal to anyone with an interest in African American or women’s history or to readers simply looking for an intriguing story about music and family.

As a key to understanding the meaning of slavery in America, the Missouri controversy of 181921 is probably our most valuable text. The heat of sectional rhetoric during the Missouri debates reached a level never exceeded, and rarely matched, until the secession crisis of 1860. Moreover, nearly all the arguments for and against slavery in Americ...

Winner, 2022 Society of Midland Authors award for Biography/Memoir Evan S. Connell (1924–2013) emerged from the American Midwest determined to become a writer. He eventually made his mark with attention-getting fiction and deep explorations into history. His linked novels Mrs. Bridge (1959) and Mr. Bridge (1969) paint a devastating portrait of the lives of a prosperous suburban family not unlike his own that, more than a half century later, continue to haunt readers with their minimalist elegance and muted satire. As an essayist and historian, Connell produced a wide range of work, including a sumptuous body of travel writing, a bestselling epic account of Custer at the Little Bighorn, and a singular series of meditations on history and the human tragedy. This first portrait and appraisal of an under-recognized American writer is based on personal accounts by friends, relatives, writers, and others who knew him; extensive correspondence in library archives; and insightful literary and cultural analysis of Connell’s work and its context. It also illuminates aspects of American publishing, Hollywood, male anxieties, and the power of place.

What happens to consciousness during the act of dying? The most compelling answers come from people who almost die and later recall events that occurred while lifesaving resuscitation, emergency care, or surgery was performed. These events are now called near-death experiences (NDEs). As medical and surgical skills improve, innovative procedures can bring back patients who have traveled farther on the path to death than at any other time in history. Physicians and healthcare professionals must learn how to appropriately treat patients who report an NDE. It is estimated that more than 10 million people in the United States have experienced an NDE. Hagan and the contributors to this volume engage in evidence-based research on near-death experiences and include physicians who themselves have undergone a near-death experience. This book establishes a new paradigm for NDEs.

In 1987 Judge Russell Clark mandated tax increases to help pay for improvements to the Kansas City, Missouri, School District in an effort to lure white students and quality teachers back to the inner-city district. Yet even after increasing employee salaries and constructing elaborate facilities at a cost of more than $2 billion, the district remained overwhelmingly segregated and student achievement remained far below national averages. Just eight years later the U.S. Supreme Court began reversing these initiatives, signifying a major retreat from Brown v. Board of Education. In Kansas City, African American families opposed to the district court's efforts organized a takeover of the school board and requested that the court case be closed. Joshua Dunn argues that Judge Clark's ruling was not the result of tyrannical "judicial activism" but was rather the logical outcome of previous contradictory Supreme Court doctrines. High Court decisions, Dunn explains, necessarily limit the policy choices available to lower court judges, introducing complications the Supreme Court would not anticipate. He demonstrates that the Kansas City case is a model lesson for the types of problems that develop for lower courts in any area in which the Supreme Court attempts to create significant change. Dunn's exploration of this landmark case deepens our understanding of when courts can and cannot successfully create and manage public policy.